1. A Civilisation and a Religion
Japan
A Civilisation and a Religion

2. Japanese Syncretism (‘cultural blending of distinct religions’.)
BUDDHISM
SHINTO: ‘Way of the Gods'

3. Japanese Syncretism, con’t.
BUDDHISM
SHINTO

4. Shuichi Kato on Japan & Literature
No story to history; no plan; no plot of events.
“undeniable tendency of Japanese culture is to avoid logic, the abstract, & systemization, in favour of emotion, the concrete, the unprogrammatic.”
Events are accumulative by addition
Japan assimilates by a simple addition of an external concept or item and then recontextualising it
In the West, there is an accommodation required: a reconfiguration of the addition or of the entire system around it.
No transcendental values: which means that when adding new not necessary to discard the old. No cultural crisis.
‘Born Shinto, Married Christian; Buried Buddhist”

5. Civilisations: (one conception of)
A civilisation is a shared set of values, culture, art, architecture, history and ways of life; and most of all, fundamental and (usually) unconscious assumptions about the way that the world works and is.
Latin American
Orthodox
Baltics, Greece, Eastern Europe, Russia
Eastern
Muslim
Japan
Sub-Saharan African
Western
Anglosphere + western Europe

6. Cultural Exclusivity Thesis
Give every civilisation the benefit of its own assumptions
Civilisation chauvinism to assume one’s own civilisation has the universal understanding
Approach other civilisations and cultures from the assumption that their fundamental values and understanding of the world is different from your own.
Universality (multiculturalism) may be a Euro-centric ideology?

7. Western Civilisation Values
All civilisations and cultures are fully explainable from Western premises and methods.
Western science is the universally-valid method of study.
All civilisations and cultures perceive the world—configure phenomena— identically and in away that Western science can explain

8. Japanese Civilisation Assumptions
Intensely subjective
Context creates meaning
“demons chuckle when they hear us talk about next year.”
Passivity a virtue when connected with reflection
Æsthetics are more important than Logical consistency .
Death is æstheticised in seppuku
Only slight exaggeration to say that Japan is an æsthetic. Japanese relations to each other— formalities, hierarchies, rituals—and to nature are æsthetic,

9. Japanese cultural assumptions: examples.
Western concept of symbolism: one thing signifies another type of thing. Platonic Forms; Judæo-Christian type-archetype; Freudian conscious-subconscious
Japan: this thing is associated with that experience or aspect. Non symbolic.
A lonely old tree is associated with—invokes—thoughts of age and loneliness. The meaning is in the person, not the object: an æsthetic approach to the world.

10. Japanese cultural assumptions: examples con’t.
Western Art—the fuller the mind of the perceiver the better the Art is appreciated
Literary Modernism: James Joyce Finnigans Wake
Renaissance Art: Giorgione The Tempest
Japan: the less the mind is active, the better.

11. Renaissance Art: Giorgione

12. The Presence of Absence
Hokusai:
神奈川沖浪裏 (Under a Wave Off Kanagawa)

13. Shuichi Kato on Japan & Religion
No story to history; no plan; no plot of events.
“undeniable tendency of Japanese culture is to avoid logic, the abstract, & systemization, in favour of emotion, the concrete, the unprogrammatic.”
Events are accumulative by addition
Japan assimilates by a simple addition of an external concept or item and then recontextualising it
In the West, there is an accommodation required: a reconfiguration of the addition or of the entire system around it.
No transcendental values: which means that when adding new not necessary to discard the old. No cultural crisis.
‘Born Shinto, Married Christian; Buried Buddhist”

14. Japanese Religious Æsthetic: Mujokan
Mujokan: A sense of transience
the impermanent quality of life, nature, and human artifacts.
Buddhism:
4 Noble Truths
8-Fold Path

15. Japanese Religious Æsthetic: Mujokan
Mujokan: A sense of transience
the impermanent quality of life, nature, and human artifacts.
First of Buddhist 4 Noble Truths: Dukkha
love of ambiguity and the abhorrence of clarity in literature and everyday language
tendency in design and architecture toward the asymmetrical and seasonal rather than the symmetrical and permanent:
click for current example: ‘yaeba’.
asymmetry is open to movement of observer’s eye or mind & therefore suggests transience.

16. Japan: mushin—’no-mind’
Mushin is an intellectual, æsthetic & martial concept:
remove the conscious mind from getting in the way of understanding, appreciation and response.
Zen 禅那 : from zenna = a practice of meditation
Zen koan emphasise meditation on nothing (‘mu’)
Japanese martial arts work toward mushin as highest warrior state

17. Mushin: 無心

18. mono no aware Mono no aware: “awareness of the pathos of things”
Mono: things; aware: sadness.
Lady Shikibu, c.985 Tale of Genji: an literary sensibility.
Contemplation of natural objects—old trees, plants, seasons—to reflect on the sadness of one’s own transient existence.

19. Japan—Silence: a significant cultural, personal, religious, and artistic virtue.
Iwanu ga hana. Not-speaking is the flower (“Silence is golden.”)
Chinmoku: kanji=“sink (down)” + “no-word.”
Seijaku: “quietude” + “loneliness- sabiness”

20. wabi-sabi
Wabi refers to a wordview -- a sense of space, direction, or path
Sabi is an aesthetic construct rooted in a given object and its features, plus the occupation of time, chronology.
Wabi-sabi is a commonly unitary referral in modern times. Now, a pop æsthetic: “Honey, look at that darling wabisabi coffee table!”

21. wabi-sabi Metaphysical Basis Spiritual Values State of Mind
Evolving toward or from nothingness: change. Love equals death
Spiritual Values
Truth comes from observing nature.
Greatness exists in the inconspicuous & overlooked details.
Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness
State of Mind
Acceptance of the inevitable, appreciation of cosmic order
Moral Precepts
Get rid of desire and all that is unnecessary.
Focus on the intrinsic & ignore material hierarchy
Local and cultural situation and order: no absolute principle
Material Qualities
Suggestion of natural process; irregularity, intimacies; unpretentious; earthy; simple above all.

22. wabi
The original connotation of wabi is based on the aloneness or separation from society experienced by the hermit, suggesting to the popular mind a misery and sad forlornness: i.e. mono no aware.
The life of the hermit came to be called wabizumai in Japan, essentially "the life of wabi," a life of solitude and simplicity.
Only by the fourteenth century in Japan were positive attributes ascribed to wabi and cultivated.
Wabi is literally – i.e. etymologically -- poverty, but it came to refer not to merely absence of material possessions but non- dependence on material possessions. 2nd & 3rd of the 4 Noble Truths (suffering caused by craving; divest of objects craved
simplicity that has shaken off the material in order to relate directly with nature and reality.
absence of dependence frees itself from indulgence, ornateness, and pomposity.

23. wabi, con’t Wabi is quiet contentment with simple things.
In short, Wabi is a way of life or spiritual path.
Zen principles inform wabi : a native Japanese syncretism of Confucian, Taoist, Buddhism, and Shinto traditions.
Typical of Japanese addition over Logic
Wabi precedes the application of aesthetic.
principles applied to objects and arts, this latter is Sabi

24. sabi
Sabi is the outward expression of aesthetic values built upon the metaphysical and spiritual principles of Zen
translates these values into artistic and material qualities.
Sabi considers natural processes result in objects that are
Irregular
Unpretentious (subtle)
ambiguous. (See yaeba.)
Sabi objects are:
irregular in being asymmetrical
unpretentious in being the holistic fruit of wabizumai
ambiguous in preferring insight and intuition, the engendering of refined spiritualized emotions rather than reason and logic.
Ambiguity allows each viewer to proceed to their capacity for nuance.

25. “shibui” Ascerbic good taste: ‘astringency.’
Simple, unadorned, subtle, hidden, beauty
The taste of umeboshi

26. wabi-sabi: objects

27. ki-sho-ten-ketsu 起承轉合
Literary composition principle
Reader-centred, opposed to Western writer- centred: esp. Modernism, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, etc.
KI: opening, beginning
SHO: continuing
TEN: turning away (change)
KETSU: binding together.

28. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts
Shichi-Go-San: “7-5- 3” Celebrate a child's 3rd, 5th & 7th birthdays, and a deceased’s 3rd, 5th & 7th anniversaries.
Haiku is syllables
rock-gardens have odd-numbered - arrangements of stones
Numbers 4 and 9 are shunned:
“4” can be “shi” meaning ‘death.’
9 can be “ku” meaning ‘suffering’

29. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts
Ten-Chi-Jin: ‘heaven-earth-man’
a sense of something high, something low. and an intermediary: the axes are spacial, temporal and human. The middle concept is (explicit in the configuration of the Noh stage) a bridge.

30. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts
Shin-Gyo-So (true, moving & grass-like.)
In calligraphy, block- style, kana & cursive; in the cha-no-yu, of its implements, formal, semi-formal, informal. Shin-gyo-so is an effective schema for mapping the uniquely Japanese manner of reacting to any discrete new foreign encounter. Evident in literature in comparative representations, structural contrasts and developments in character

31. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts
Jo-Ha-Kyu (gathering, break, urgent action)
A concept exemplified by -- & likely originating in contemplation of -- the waterfall. In literature -- notably haiku -- it signifies introduction, development, action. In music, it has several compounding applications, essentially a triptych of increasing rapidity & climax. This is accepted as the natural rhythm -- gestation, birth, life is just one obvious universal triad/

32. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts
Shu-Ha-Ri (keep the form, lose the form, no form)
the process by which mastery of any art or practice is attained.
copy and practice the fundamental forms
Steadily lose reliance on use of fundamental form
Achieve mastery where the art is natural, personal, and subconscious (=mushin)
applies to the arts (e.g. calligraphy, literature, painting), professions, martial arts, sport, etc.